Friday, October 21, 2011

Illustrated: Inside the Obama 2008 Money-Laundering Machine

A year in advance of the momentous 2012 elections, it's worth revisiting the 2008 campaign that brought Barack Obama to power. In particular, the Obama campaign took an unprecedented series of steps to allow illegal campaign contributions and electronic money laundering.

Imagine a campaign that accepted made-up credit-card numbers, which were probably tried one after another until valid card numbers were found. Obama's 2008 fundraising website intentionally allowed this to occur.

Or a campaign that accepted untraceable prepaid cash cards that could easily have been used to evade contribution limits or mask contributor identities. Obama's 2008 fundraising website intentionally allowed this to occur.

Now imagine hundreds of millions of dollars in undisclosed, suspect donations orchestrated by foreign nationals and other persons unknown. Obama's 2008 fundraising website intentionally allowed this sort of activity to occur.

Let me repeat that last point. The Obama campaign's website intentionally allowed the use of fake computer addresses (known in the tech world as IP addresses). In my opinion, there is only one reason a website would allow the submission of a fake IP address: money-laundering. Logging of the true IP address would mean that the real source (including the city and country) of the contribution could be traced. Allowing a fake address to be logged instead would prevent authorities from ascertaining the true origin of the donation.